February 26, 2010

The Lines You Amend

Depending on the type of event I’m shooting, I’ll either move around for the sake of variety or stay in one place for the sake of courtesy. With a few exceptions, courtesy was my primary concern at yesterday’s Canada Reads event in the Toronto Reference Library’s Appel Salon. As a result, I didn’t move around too much; unfortunately, this approach can result in a monotonous set of photos.

I usually shoot photographs as close to a horizontal or vertical orientation as I can, especially when straight lines are involved. In other words, given the circumstances, I usually take photos like the one below. The lines aren’t perfectly straight, but that's not a big deal in this case.

As I said before, an album of similar photos would have been mundane, even with different people sitting in the chair. Fortunately, while Roland Pemberton (a.k.a. Cadence Weapon) was being interviewed by host Mary Ito, I got the notion to play with orientations. As a result, I started taking photos like this one.

In this example, thanks to my placement of Shakura S’Aida (the main subject), the lines lead your eyes directly to her body. Mind you, this would have been true if the lines were straight, but these slanted lines are more likely to grab your attention and “coerce” your vision. If I took this picture in a similar fashion to the previous one, it wouldn’t have been as interesting.

I enjoyed using this technique throughout the photo shoot, as you can see below in this photo of Mary Wiens.